lost and found

found in the gutter on my midnight stroll.

left to right:

british coins*,
1- 1 pence
2- 2 pence
4- 5 pence
1- 10 pence
1- 20 pence

spanish euro coins,
1- 5 cent
1- 10 cent**

u.s. coins,
2- 1 cent

all are roughed up and scarred from being run over in the street. i wonder why and how long they might have been where i found them. i imagine some crazed spanish vagabond tossing them out the window of a fast moving vehicle and laughing maniacally. 

*- those english sure are proud of elizabethII. her profile is on all of them.

**- my favorite. it has a picture of the enigmatic cervantes on the obverse, national side.

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guess what i'm giving everyone for christmas...

The Day of Judgement

from the center panel of the

Memling Triptych in Gdańsk.

come judgement day, i'm pretty sure i'll be headed straight to hell for that one.  and for trying so dang hard to get out of christmas this year. only to be over ruled, i might add.

[phone call]

"are you serious? do you have a reason?"

"i've got half a dozen reasons."

"good."

before i even got to the 3rd one i was interrupted and the rest was never spoken.

as rodney daingerfield used to say, "i don't get no respect."

sometimes i hate being loved.

nothing personal, but...

bah fucking humbug.

------------------------------

this is unrelated, but it brought a much needed smile to my face. it's highly addictive, loads of fun...and very civilized, if you ask me.

and if you watch the 2nd video here you'll see my xmas offering at exactly the 2:57-2:58 mark.

(and if you watch the 1st video, tell me if you were as surprised as i was that there was no adolescent-boy-breast-poking involved.)

merry christmas, y'all

p.s.

Juste judex ultionis,
donum fac remissionis
ante diem rationis.

 

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cleaning out the closets

Here is the beginning of my post. And here is the rest of it. Read more!

cleaning out the camera

this is a view out my bedroom window. later that same evening i went out for a stroll (without the camera) and saw jupiter and venus very near that same crescent moon. it was a very cool thing to witness.

for a view of some of the other things i found on my walks last week...

i live a couple of blocks from a hopping night-life district. the bills and jewelry were found in the early morning hours. the bracelet (anklet?) was broken into many pieces and lying in the street near the single ear ring. i wonder what happened? a drunken lover's quarrel, perhaps?

the bills i imagine falling out of pockets while inebriated fools fish for car keys.

i found this interesting little goodie on my way to mom's the other day. it's plastic and slightly padded. there are 4 metallic contact points on the front.

this is the back of the cowboy hat. that's like a tiny speaker in the center and 4 tiny electrical contacts(?) at bottom left.

any idea what it used to say? or sing?


yes, i know... it's an odd thing that i do, but i almost never come home empty handed. it's usually less interesting stuff than last week's bumper crop of a haul (at least to most people), and rarely as lucrative. ($6.07 woot!)

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i posted on lily's virtual book club about the book we've been reading. the book is called "a short history of tractors in ukrainian." it's quite enjoyable and a surprisingly poignant, yet unsentimental, family drama. 


so far there only 4 of us in the clubhouse. won't you join us? there's plenty of room.  

...it was really cold here last night and this morning. cold for here, anyway. and windy. i went out walking at midnight. ice crunched underfoot and i came home with frost on my nose. this morning i walked over to see mom. it's funny how she has no idea if it's cold or hot or windy or still outside. she noticed my hands were cold and seemed to enjoy holding them to her face.

it's starting to get cold again now. (it warmed up to almost 40 this afternoon.) i don't know how you eskimos do it. 20 degrees and 20 mph wind is butt freeze cold to me. and here it only lasts a day or 2 at a time. i hope.

(((y'all stay warm.)))

and come visit our book club. it won't be nearly so lame (no offense lily, josephine and clippy) with you there. (maybe)
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of lemons and monkeys and a random Q.O.T.D.

when life gives you lemons...laugh your ass off at it.

Question Of The Day: wtf is pink lemonade, anyway?

according to carnival historian Joe Nickell, in his 2005 book Secrets of the Sideshows, a man named Pete Conklin who ran a circus lemonade and peanut concession actually was the one who invented the drink. One day in 1857, while Conklin was making regular lemonade, he ran out of water. In desperation, he used the pink water from a tub that one of the bareback riders had used to wash her red tights. Unfazed, Conklin added some lemon slices and sold the concoction as “strawberry lemonade,” promptly doubling his sales. And, as they say, when life gives you lemons …

isn't that fascinating?

although pink lemons do exist, today's pink lemonade isn't made from their juice. (hopefully, it's made of some artificial dye not derived from an athlete's tights. right?)

remind me to never drink pink lemonade again...

but trust me on this one... bicycle riding monkeys are REAL.

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2 things

when the kids were little we had this routine at supper time. each of us would tell a good thing and a bad thing that had happened that day. one evening, in her sweet, squeaky, little 4-year-old voice, josephine just said, "grammawgrampaw." the rest of us laughed and laughed. did she not understand the concept? or had nothing bad occurred? whatever the case, from then on our little ritual was no longer "good thing/bad thing," but simply, "2 things."

having read this blog post from josephine yesterday morning, let me just say, "josephinesean."

as a parent it is very gratifying to know they have such a close relationship. have each others back, so to speak. may you all be so lucky.  may you always be such good friends with your siblings...

ok. enough sap for today. check out this article about a recent breakthrough in alzheimer's research involving β-breakers. that's "beta-breakers" - not to be confused with the annual "bay-to-breakers" 12-k run in san francisco.

Few things to keep in mind when doing this historical and very San Francisco race:

-You can drink and party on the route during the race. Be prepared to see bars and kegs on wheels.
-There will be many runners and walkers in costumes. Elvis will be seen numerous times through out the day.
-Bring tortillas for the start of the race. You don’t want to be unprepared for the traditional “Tortilla Fight” starting line.
-This is the only day you can be nude in public and not get arrested...(nude costume)

you can read more about the silly race here.

(pictured above: vegan cornbread and avocado salsa.) Read more!